Re: Famous Mathematica 5.0 not working with Mathematica 6?
- To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
- Subject: [mg77027] Re: Famous Mathematica 5.0 not working with Mathematica 6?
- From: ulises <ulises at wolfram.com>
- Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2007 02:38:37 -0400 (EDT)
- References: <f3jif1$dpc$1@smc.vnet.net><f3lvbr$75u$1@smc.vnet.net>
Although the V6 and V5 plotting engines are quite different, a more
fair comparison would be:
Timing[Plot3D[Sin[x*y], {x, 0, 2*Pi}, {y, 0, 2*Pi},
PlotPoints -> 4000, PerformanceGoal -> "Speed",
NormalsFunction -> None];][[1]]
On my machine the speed difference is still about 9x (120 sec vs 14
sec). Note that the ouputs are completely different, in V5 you had a
SurfaceGraphics object which only had the z values, equivalent to
Table[]. In V6, you have all the {x,y,z} coordinates, plus all the
Polygon[] entries for the all mesh consisting of triangles, all
enclosed in a GraphicsComplex[] object.
In V6, the emphasis is on adaptive refinement and quality, which means
that smaller values of PlotPoints should be enough to generate a
smoother surface.
For this benchmark test files, as mentioned before, using the legacy
<<Version5`Graphics` is the only way of making a fair comparison.
Ulises Cervantes
WRI